Saturday, May 17, 2008

The reason I am not in bed right now...

...is because this evening, the minister of music at my church asked, no BEGGED, me if I could please, please, help him with the conducting for tomorrow's choir and orchestra production. They did a performance tonight, and I thought it was remarkably good compared to previous performances by the same group, but he has to conduct both the choir and orchestra, which is quite a laborious task. (I apologize for that horrific run-on sentence. My brain is fried.) It's always best to have two conductors. I have filled in for him in the past when he has been gone for a weekend and I can read music. However, the Reverend must think much more highly of my musical ability if he thinks I can learn an hour-long choral production in one night.

So here I am, sitting at my computer with the CD in the CD-ROM drive (because the only other operational CD player in the house is in Lance's room) with my head buried in this music, circling the dynamic markings, checking for the repeat signs and codas, looking for time signature changes and praying to high heaven that I will be able to make sense out of this and be useful tomorrow.

(Here comes the part where I get all childish and whiny.) Tomorrow was supposed to be my day to sleep in. (My husband and I generally attend our church's Saturday evening service.) I've been battling an icky cough and I was really looking forward to relaxing tomorrow, but it was clear from the performance tonight that the choir really does need the extra help, so I agreed.

Maybe if I start saying "no" once in awhile, people will stop asking me to do outlandish things at the last minute like this... don't get me wrong, I like helping out, but this is a very big job and I have a small child to care for and a sore throat to nurse. Grumble grumble groan bad words.

Hopefully my bad attitude will be gone by tomorrow. Thank goodness for blogs, I can get all this rubbish out of my system and arrive at the church with a much better spirit.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

No is a VERY liberating word, especially when it is justified. I got asked to speak at a church function the day that I return from leading a 3-day girl's camp backpacking trip. Could I have managed both? Probably but why kill myself trying to cram it in. Saying "no" never felt so good.

I hope it goes well!

Anonymous said...

Oh...I hope you got at least a little bit of rest...

Sometimes it's hard to say no, I know all about that. Hope it went well..

Anonymous said...

I hope everything went wonderfully and that you are now resting! I also have a difficult time saying "no."

Anonymous said...

Hope you are feeling better and all turned out ok! :-)

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness for blogs indeed. A great place to vent!

I hope you're feeling better.

It's ok to say no. Don't feel guilty about it, people need to know we have limits.

Anonymous said...

Apparently you can learn it in one night! Er, but then you wind up with bronchitis..... I hope you feel better!